Canon i9900 Printer Issues

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GSXR_Rider

Senior Member
Hey everyone,

It's been a while since I've posted here. Hopefully this can be posted in this section, if not moderators feel free to move it. I recently received a Canon i9900 printer from my brother, he no longer needed it and gave it to me to use for printing photos. It prints but the colors are faded, I replaced the cartridges with new aftermarket ones and use the printer command to clean the print-head automatically. This produced somewhat better results in test shots, but marginally so. There definitely isn't a chip issue with the printer, would a manual print-head cleaning bring it back to optimal condition? I would assume so since its been sitting for a very long time and probably has never been manually cleaned. If anyone has experience in this area please let me know!

Link to manual print-head cleaning: Howdy! I have a 5 year old Canon i9900 printer and am getting
 
Bob Blaylock

Bob Blaylock

Senior Member
GSXR_Rider said:
Hey everyone,

It's been a while since I've posted here. Hopefully this can be posted in this section, if not moderators feel free to move it. I recently received a Canon i9900 printer from my brother, he no longer needed it and gave it to me to use for printing photos. It prints but the colors are faded, I replaced the cartridges with new aftermarket ones and use the printer command to clean the print-head automatically. This produced somewhat better results in test shots, but marginally so. There definitely isn't a chip issue with the printer, would a manual print-head cleaning bring it back to optimal condition? I would assume so since its been sitting for a very long time and probably has never been manually cleaned. If anyone has experience in this area please let me know!
Click to expand...

There's your problem.
 
G

GSXR_Rider

Senior Member
So, after soaking the print head in water/isopropyl alcohol for 4 minutes all the colors print vibrantly EXCEPT for black. I'm going to try to let it soak overnight and see if that makes it any better, any suggestions?

I'm not getting any flashing lights on the printer so I don't think the print head is damaged in any way....
 
D

Don Kuykendall_RIP

RIP :(
A lot of times the after market inks are not near as good as the OEM. I tried to print my own photos for a while but although I could get the prints just where I wanted them it took forever to re-balance the color every time you changed to a different paper. If was just not economical to do my own printing. Cheaper to send them to Nations.
 
G

GSXR_Rider

Senior Member
Don Kuykendall said:
A lot of times the after market inks are not near as good as the OEM. I tried to print my own photos for a while but although I could get the prints just where I wanted them it took forever to re-balance the color every time you changed to a different paper. If was just not economical to do my own printing. Cheaper to send them to Nations.
Click to expand...

I think I'm going to try and pick up an OEM black ink cartridge from staples tomorrow and see if that makes any difference. Soaking the print-head in the water/isopropyl alcohol mixture did a great job of bringing the rest of the colors back...
 
G

GSXR_Rider

Senior Member
I think there's a bigger problem with this printer, an overnight soak did not fix this partially clogged black ink issue. I'm close to declaring this a total loss and just dumping it... IMG_4599[1].jpg

You can see that every color has the full rectangular block, black is the only one that appears to be missing, and that is confirmed by printing out a picture with a lot of dark areas or black in general...
 
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G

GSXR_Rider

Senior Member
Swapped print-heads and it works perfectly now!! Also used compressed air to shoot into the nozzles of the print-head and force ink out (this backfired to some extent when ink shot all over my favorite shirt and my face)....
 
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Needa

Needa

Senior Member
Challenge Team
Try printing some E-patterns, essentially a page filled with the capital letter E.

Too late. Glad you got it.
 
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